


everyone's lost, the battle is won

by openended



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Insomnia, Past Kaidan Alenko/Commander Shepard, Past Relationship(s), all your friends are dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-14 23:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4584858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>(with all these things that I’ve done)</i> Guilt drips into her like the leaking faucet splashes into the bathroom sink. The sink drains, but she doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everyone's lost, the battle is won

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously. All but two of this Shepard's friends are dead.

It’s a long night.

A long night in a series of long nights, indistinguishable from the rest if it weren’t for the guilt dripping slowly from her fingertips the way her leaking faucet drips into the metal sink while she lies in her bed and stares up at the stars above.

Quiet drips - _plink, plink, plink_. 

Guilt is familiar, only tonight she has an entire species clawing at her skull instead of individual names.

(Padok Wiks. Eve.

Tali, Mordin, Jack, Jacob, Thane, Legion, Grunt, Zaeed, Kasumi, Karin, Kelly, Ken, Gabby.

Pressly.

Ashley.)

***

It’s a long night. Again.

She’d tried to sleep after Tuchanka, when Garrus all but kicked her out of the war room, but the guilt dripped its way into her dreams, into the forest with the shadows that seem to triple every time she closes her eyes. 

And then Liara, and the salarian councilor. And Udina, and Cerberus, and Kai Leng.

(Kaidan. 

Kaidan, on his knees, clutching his stomach. She stares past him, and the blood spilling around his fingers, to pull the trigger on Udina.

Kaidan, his armor clanks and he falls to the floor. Kaidan, gasping in understanding or apology or forgiveness, she’ll never know.

Kaidan, who never could trust her after Horizon. Kaidan, who she maybe loved once. Kaidan, whose turned back she couldn’t forget and replace with his smile again, no matter how she tried. 

Kaidan, who she might have saved, had she tried a little harder.

 _Kaidan Alenko_ , a new plaque on the wall, they’re running out of room. Six spots left, if she counted right through her blurry vision while Garrus reminisced about Ashley.)

She doesn’t even try to sleep after the coup. Leaves Liara to her thoughts and grabs two bottles from behind the bar, sends a message to Garrus, feeds her jellyfish and doesn’t bother with a glass.

***

She takes one sip from the bottle, but then leaves it alone. 

“I shot Wiks,” she says, breaking half an hour of silence.

“And the genophage?”

She shakes her head. “Not cured.” She pauses. “I need the salarians. And the krogan.”

(as if she ever needed to justify herself to Garrus; Garrus, who’s somehow emerged alive from her wreckage. 

Garrus, who has his own list of bodies overflowing with guilt.)

Garrus sighs. A quiet, resigned sort of sigh. An expectant sigh. An _exhausted_ sigh. “I meant it, Shepard. I would’ve been tempted, too.”

It’s meant to be comforting, and she thanks him for trying to help, but it isn’t.

 _Tempted_ is one thing.

 _Tempted_ was in the trucks, in the tunnels, dodging brutes and dropping hammers.

 _Tempted_ was holding a gun to a scientist trying to do the right thing. 

_Tempted_ was not pulling the trigger. But she pulled the trigger.

And when Garrus leaves and she puts their bottles away, hers still mostly untouched, and she lies awake in bed, the souls of a billion unborn krogan push on her from every side.

(Kaidan isn’t even here to give her a pep talk about integrity. About doing terrible things for the right reasons. About how a thing goes down.

She sees him, behind closed eyelids, but he melts away into a shadow with all the rest.)

***

The long nights run into each other. She gives up trying to close her eyes, stays up playing Tetris and watching Galactic Hospital reruns until it’s too late even for those and every channel turns into nonstop infomercials for omnimixers.

Traynor says something, bolder now since the chess game and the testicle joke that got a genuine laugh, but she shakes her head, brushes off Traynor’s concern. Makes a quip about her cybernetics glowing too brightly, keeping her awake. 

Traynor laughs, shaky and nervous, and doesn’t mention it again.

***

The quarians join the krogan.

 _At least Tali isn’t alive to see this_ , she tells herself as the fleet falls from Rannoch's sky.

***

(Wrex.

Five spots left.)

***

“I just want to sleep,” she tells Doctor Michel. Her voice wavers, and she thinks she’d be embarrassed if she had any energy left for feelings. “Just...three hours. No dreams.”

She leaves medbay with a small bottle of white pills and finally manages to sleep without guilt or shadows, or Kaidan lurking in the corners.

She isn’t any better for those three hours, but it feels like a victory anyway. They’re short on victories these days; she’ll take what she can get.

***

(Thessia.

Liara grieving in a locked room.

Thessia, and she runs straight to Horizon. So many systems marked red she can barely see safe relays on the map anymore, and fury and guilt drive her forward, drive her so fast she feels like she might trip.

Miranda. Four spots left.)

***

_Plink, plink, plink._

Even her jellyfish are dead. They were alive before Thessia, she thinks. She isn’t sure.

She stares at the tank, her jellyfish floating motionless at the top. Her eyes sting, and her vision starts to blur, and the air is thick in her throat, and she isn’t sure how she got to the battery but she’s fallen to the floor by the cannons, sobbing in the red light.

It’s too much. It’s much too much and her tears _hurt_ , so much trying to escape all at once she can barely breathe. 

Shadows of quarians and krogan and Kaidan and Tali and Wrex and her damn _jellyfish_ , and she claws at her hair and _pulls_. Maybe she can pull herself back, maybe she can make it stop. But she only cries harder, feels some thin strands come away with ease, fall through her fingers, and she wonders if the last name on the wall isn’t going to be _Shepard_.

The clank of armor beside her, and Garrus’ hands on hers, gently untangling her fingers from her hair. She fights him, struggles, tries to push and kick him away, but he doesn’t move. 

“Shepard,” he says, voice as gentle as his hands.

She takes in enough air to say: “I killed them all.”

***

She doesn’t remember the rest.

When she wakes, she’s lying on the cot he keeps in the battery for long nights. A soft blanket tucked around her, pillow underneath her head.

She blinks. Her eyes are gritty and swollen, and sitting up is a struggle with aching joints and muscles. There’s a bottle of water beside the cot and she drinks half of it before her head’s clear enough to see more than what’s in front of her.

Garrus, quietly working at his terminal.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

***

( _Shepard_.

Four spots left still, after the end. Hers in the middle beside Anderson's, but four spots left at the bottom.)


End file.
